do i not bleed too;

Lasair didn’t have the energy to protest most of the journey out of the woods. Her head swam nauseatingly, her breath shallow and too quick. She could feel that hollow feeling in her gut grow, split apart, and she hissed through clenched teeth as her knees gave out and the stranger paused to carry her like some delicate piece of glass.

And normally she’d allow it, usually at home with using the people around her for her own comfort, but she didn’t have the strength choose otherwise, which was bad enough all on its own. But he also sounded so damned concerned, which made her sick to be at someone else’s mercy like this. To be seen so weak, and worse, pitiable. Pathetic. She’d been a dragon not an hour ago, for Fortune’s sake, but every movement felt like it tore right through her, and she could barely get enough air into her lungs. It felt like hunger gnawing and eating itself and all the loathsome aftereffects of sudden starvation.

Her vision dipped in and out as she was laid down, and she had to focus when her buttons were undone by this thrice-damned altruistic stranger. She tried to shove his hands away and only hit open air, and she squinted through the haze to see his look of pained shock.

What was he-? She looked down, seeing her full-corset immodestly bared, and eaten away at the abdomen by a set of teeth blackened by its own sheen of tar that had nothing to do with the beast she’d squared off against. His question barely registered, fighting through a ringing in her ears as those jagged fangs moved of their own accord, and a wave of hunger hit her like a sledgehammer.

She winced as she met his gaze narrowly. She didn’t ask for his help or his pity, and being made so vulnerable made her bare her already sharp teeth. “What do you think it’s from?” She sneered, pushing him back with a weak, shivering hand. “From walks in the park? Petting puppies?”

She wanted him gone. There was only one person she’d let see her this low, and it wasn’t him. Low and insidious, she leaned in and snarled, “I’ve gotten my hands bloody enough that it’s gone from red to black. And I’d do it again, and I’d do it for fun, and I’d do it for the slightest excuse from sanctimonious bastards who say I can’t.”

Hungry, she was so hellishly hungry. She leaned back onto the pillows, pale-faced and painting from even the effort of that, and wrapped her arms around her middle. The teeth brushed eerily against her skin, eager for something to eat. She sucked in a breath and turned her cheek to the pillow. “Leave,” She hissed. “I won't warn you twice."